Steven James - The Knight

Tessa didn’t know if he was her father, but it was appearing more and more likely that he was, and whenever she read his name she began to feel that old mixture of pain, anger, and heartache that she felt whenever she thought of her absentee dad.

Then she read:

November 29

No, no, no, no, no!

So he tells me today he likes this other girl, that he’s just “not into me anymore.” Not into me anymore??!! We’ve been going out for six months! And why did he have to tell me he likes someone else? Why couldn’t he have just said it’s over? Why did he have to mention her The entry ended abruptly, but then her mother spent the next dozen or so entries sorting through her feelings about the breakup, and Tessa discovered that her mom had done pretty much the same things she did when she broke up with a guy-ranted, cried, pretended that she’d never liked him in the first place, and then found another guy a little too quickly and fell for him a little too hard.

And that’s what happened to her mother on December 20th.

This guy’s name was Paul.

Tessa felt a wisp of fear and anticipation flutter through her, and she just couldn’t wait anymore. She had to know. She scanned the pages. Raced through the next few weeks.

Into January-her mother broke up with Paul. But they’d slept together a few times. So, unless there was someone else she hadn’t written about Then February, March.

Her mom had started getting queasy, sick more and more often. Yes, it has to be him.

April.

She’d missed her last couple periods, wasn’t ready for exams, just wanted vacation to come and was trying to find a job for the summer If there was someone else, if she’d slept with someone else, she would have said so…

And then Tessa read the entry her mother had written on May 5th, and the world tipped upside down.

Dear Diary,

This morning I found out I’m pregnant. It’s Paul’s. I don’t know what to do. I can’t have a baby. I can’t! This was the worst day of my life.

And Tessa sat motionless, speechless, staring at the page.

Obviously it would be hard for a teenager to hear that she’s going to be a single mom. Obviously. Tessa knew that. But still, the words knifed through her.

“This was the worst day of my life.”

Her throat tightened so much that she could barely breathe, and her fingers were shaking as she turned the page.

But the next entry was not written by her mother.

Instead, it was a handwritten letter pasted onto the page.

A letter from Paul.

Christie,

I’m sorry for how things are, for how they’ve been. But please, I’m the father. Don’t do this. I’ll do whatever you want-pay the medical bills, help raise the baby, find someone to adopt it, but please don’t do this. Whatever you think of me, I’m a jerk, OK, I’m a loser, but let me do something right here. Let me help. Let me do one good thing. Please, keep our baby.

– Paul

Tessa did not breathe for a long time. She let her eyes walk through the words two, three times.

All of her life she had hated her father, had thought that he didn’t want anything to do with her. So now, even though the main intent of the letter should have probably struck her the most, her initial reaction was shock that her biological father, her real father, had wanted to be part of her life.

His name is Paul.

Your dad’s name is Paul. And he wanted to help raise you.

But then the deeper, more obvious impact of the words settled in.

“Please don’t do this…” he’d written. “I’m the father.”

“I’ll do whatever you want-pay the medical bills, help raise the baby, find someone to adopt it, but please don’t do this.”

“No…” she whispered. “Oh, please no.”

“Keep our baby.”

The truth slammed into her.

Harsh and brutal.

Her mother, the person Tessa had loved and trusted more than anyone else on the planet, had wanted to abort her and her father, the man she’d always hated, had begged to save her life.

Everything Tessa had believed about her mother and her father, all of it, everything, had been a lie.

A lie.

A lie The front door to the house banged open, and she heard Patrick’s voice: “Hey, guys. I came to say good-bye.”

He knew about this. He had to have known!

She snatched up the diary and, using her finger to mark the place, stormed downstairs and into the living room. Patrick stood beside the door. “So, Raven, how’s the-”

“What do you know about this?” She held up the diary.

“What do you mean?”

Martha emerged from the kitchen.

“Tell me. Don’t lie to me,” Tessa said to him. “Did you read it?”

“I told you before, I didn’t read it. What’s going on?”

“Did you know about this!” She flipped the diary to Paul’s letter.

“It’s a letter from my dad, my real dad. And he’s telling Mom that he doesn’t want her to get a… a…” Her voice broke apart, and she couldn’t finish her sentence.

Patrick looked at the page but didn’t answer.

“Did you know!”

“Here,” he said softly. “Let me see that.” He took the diary from her and Martha eased a few quiet steps toward them, and then everything sort of came to a standstill while Patrick read the letter.

After a few moments he slowly closed the diary and handed it back to her. “I’m not sure what to say.”

“Huh, imagine that.”

“You have to remember how much your mother loved you.”

“Oh, wow? Really? I guess that’s why she wanted to abort me, then-because she loved me so much.”

“Listen, she did love you. You know that. It’s not right to-”

“To do what? Judge her? She wrote that the day she found out she was pregnant was the worst day of her life. What is there to judge? She didn’t want me!”

“She did want you.” Patrick reached for her shoulder, but she pulled back. “She was a loving woman, a caring woman-”

“No.”

“But she was human.”

“Stop it.”

“Just as human as you or me. And she-”

“Stop it! I know what you’re trying to do. It’s not gonna work.”

“Tessa.” His voice had become firm, but she could tell he wasn’t mad. Not really. “I know you’re upset, but just stop and listen for a second. Please. She never regretted having you. She told me that you were the best thing that ever happened to her. She told me that before she died.”

“June 3rd, Patrick,” she said, and she could feel something deep inside of her cracking. “Paul wrote that letter on June 3rd. You know when my birthday is, right? So, do the math. Mom was twenty weeks along when he wrote this letter. You know what that means.”

“Tessa. Please don’t do this.”

“My heart was beating. My brain was working. I could learn things. I could feel pain. Be calmed by music, experience mood swings.” She could hear the hurt filling her voice, but she didn’t care, didn’t try to hide anything anymore. “I could have been delivered and survived, but-”

“Tessa-”

“You know what they do in a late-term abortion? Maybe a D amp; E? Maybe she could have done that to ‘get it taken care of.’ They insert a clamp up through the uterus, grab a part of the body, and they-”

“Shh,” Martha said.

“-pull it apart-”

Patrick shook his head. “Tessa-”

“-piece by piece and then they crush the head and suction out the pieces. Or a D amp; X? Stick a surgical scissors in right here.” Tessa pointed at the base of her skull. Her finger was trembling. “It would have been right here on me. Right here! They pry open a hole… and insert a…”

Martha rested her hand gently on Tessa’s shoulder. “Don’t think about such-”